Beth silently scaled the wall and balanced on the spaced slats of the patio roof. The window was securely locked against the January chill. She unzipped her sweatshirt, wrapped it around her fist, and slammed the swathed hand against the pane nearest the latch. The pieces tinkled quietly to the carpet below. After opening the window, Beth hoisted herself through into the bedroom. A quick glance around the room advertised the ministrations of a meticulous housekeeper, but more importantly, there was nothing readily available to be used as a weapon against her. She crept to the other side of the bed so her silhouette against the window wouldn’t make her an easy target. Fred, a huge 6’4” bruiser, easily topped 250 lbs. Beth weighed in at 127 lbs, so she planned all advantages to her favor. Fred’s first instinct as he entered the bedroom would be to flip the lights; a half twist for each light bulb left him in darkness, and darkness was her friend.
Beth could hear the cacophony of professional wrestling downstairs; Fred was watching TV, as expected. Beth moved with confidence in the room, easily avoiding furniture in the dark. She had been in this room before; in every room. She always did a thorough recon for every operation.
Beth hefted a cheap ceramic vase and hurled it against the wall; let the games begin. The crash got Fred’s attention and he maintained a heavy stream of invective lumbering up the stairs. He entered the bedroom with a bottle of MGD in his left hand and reached for the light switch with his right. The lack of illumination distracted him long enough for Beth to smash her right foot into his Adam’s apple in a vicious aerial roundhouse kick, thus destroying his ability to cry out.
Fred dropped to his knees clutching his throat and Beth took the opportunity to deliver a crushing textbook kick to his genitals. Wheezing and clutching his injured crotch, Fred dropped to the carpeted floor and tucked himself into a fetal position. Smugly, Beth saw her victim was close to losing consciousness and had yet to see his assailant. She nimbly dashed out of the bedroom and down the stairs, through the kitchen, and through the connecting door to the garage. She located a roll of duct tape, exactly where she knew it was stored. She claimed her prize and trotted upstairs to begin Fred’s education; she stopped briefly to turn off the TV; no distractions.
Beth was satisfied to see Fred concentrating on his pain, barely cognizant of his surroundings. She rolled him over onto his stomach placing her knee in the small of his back. She yanked his meaty arms together to wrap them with tape, but Fred had been playing possum. He bucked spastically, throwing Beth backward. He lurched to his knees and swung a meaty fist in her direction, but she was already rolling out of reach. She popped up quickly while he was struggling to get on his feet. She swept his knee with a low roundhouse, and he went crashing to the floor again. She had been overconfident, and he was hellishly strong, almost a disaster. She rained blows on his prone form so he would be incapable of launching a further defense. He tucked once again into a protective fetal position, whimpering, fading in and out of consciousness. Beth suddenly stopped, she needed his full attention. She produced smelling salts from a zippered pocket, popped the vial, and held it under Fred’s nose. He recoiled against the stench of ammonia, alert once again.
Beth twisted the light bulbs to dispel the darkness—visuals were an important part of the educational process. “Get on your knees, Fred,” Beth commanded. Fred started. He hadn’t realized the gender of his attacker.
Croaking, barely audible, “Bitch! What are you doing in my house?” With his voice impaired, curled in the fetal position, Fred’s blustering was unimpressive. Beth was unappreciative of his slow response time and lashed out with a sharp kick to the kidneys. She grabbed a handful of hair, squatted, and brought her masked face within inches of Fred’s tortured visage, “On…your…knees…NOW.” Beth’s nostrils itched with the familiar smell of sweat and fear—she had a history of making men nervous.
Fred struggled painfully to his knees. Beth stepped behind him and quickly wrapped the duct tape around his wrists. She returned to stand in front of him, just out of reach with her feet spread in typical fighter’s stance and her arms poised to deliver another blow if he attempted to resist. She paced before him and began the lesson, “So you like to beat your wife. Bad plan, moron.” Beth stepped in closer. Placing her hands on her knees, she sunk to a semi-crouch until she was eye-to-eye with her pupil. Softly, “Are you listening Fred?”
Fred was regarding her carefully. He was in a great deal of pain, but he hadn’t yet come to fear her. She would fix that—he was going to feel the fear his wife had every time he raised his hand against her. The feeling that the pain is coming and there’s no stopping it, that there’s no one to help you, that you’re all alone, that maybe this time you’d die, and maybe wanting that a little because it meant an end to the pain.
“Are you LISTENING?” Beth punctuated her query with a lightning-fast roundkick to Fred’s ribs. A crack of breaking bone reverberated in the silent room. Sweat beads formed on Fred’s pale forehead. Beth leaned in again, “I need your full attention here pal,” Beth whispered sweetly. Fred spat in her face, “Suck my cock, bitch.” Beth raised up on the balls of her feet and hammered her right elbow down smashing the bridge of his nose, “Wrong answer, asshole.” She stepped away and resumed pacing.
“Fred, I think you may have broken your nose, you’re going to want to get that looked at. I know a good doctor, the same doctor who set you wife’s nose the first time you broke it…of course, he’s not the same doctor that set it the second time, or the third. Very clever of you to take your wife to different doctors and hospitals when she needed to be patched up.” Beth regarded Fred peripherally to see how close he was to breaking. Blood dripped from his nose, and he had to suck air in through his damaged throat. Close, so close.
She bent to retrieve her hunting knife, and the flash of the razor sharp blade got his attention. His eyes widened slightly and his gaze riveted on the flashing blue tempered steel. Beth sliced through his clothing, removing it piecemeal. The humiliation of nudity was an excellent tactic used against prisoners of war. She was an expert on inflicting emotional distress.
“Fred, you’ve got a good thing going here with Ginny. What is it now, nine years? No, ten this coming Sunday. I hope you weren’t planning to forget your anniversary.” Beth continued her one-sided conversation as she sheared him. “Now why would you ever want to hurt Ginny? She has dinner waiting for you every night. She cleans your house, she brings you beer. She massages your back. She’s a good woman, don’t you think?”
Fred’s eyes narrowed, Beth could see him calculating how far she was going to go. “Then why, you bastard, do you think you need to use her as your punching bag?” Beth screamed in his face. “You fat lard ass, you’ve broken her nose three times. She’s been hospitalized twice. She’s been in the emergency room three times this past year alone. Three fucking times Fred!” Beth punctuated her outburst with random blows to Fred’s ribcage. Each blow landed with a sickening crack. As suddenly as the storm exploded, it stopped. Beth left the room.
She returned with a baseball bat. “Remember this bat Fred? You’ve probably had this since high school, huh stud?” She stood in a batter’s stance, swinging the bat in vicious arcs, as if in the on-deck circle. “Ginny can’t hear out of her left ear, can she?” Fred whimpered. “Now why not? She wasn’t born with a hearing problem, was she? Nooooooo.” Beth stepped in suddenly and swept the bat whoosh centimeters over his head. Fred’s gurgled scream refused to pass through his crushed larynx. “You hit her with your BAT, didn’t you? As if your damn fists didn’t do enough damage.” Beth swung again, this time aiming for the face and stopping an inch from the bloody lump of his nose. “You didn’t even have the decency to get rid of the bat.” She choked up and sliced viciously into his abdomen. Fred jacknifed, puking, lost his balance and splashed into his warm vomit. Beth dropped the bat to the floor in front of Fred’s face, jacked her knee up to her chest and hammered her heel down on the middle of the bat, sending splinters from the smashed wood into his face.
Fred, wracked with sobs that could not escape his crushed throat, lost all pretense of defiance. Instantly, Beth was all calm ice again. “Fred, I know all about you. Ex-football jock, stuck in a dreary job you hate, your glory days long past. I know about your little fling with the waitress at the diner and your separate bank account. I even know what you did the night of your senior prom. We’ve been watching you for a long time, Freddie boy, and I have to tell you, we’re not at all pleased.” Fred’s eyes resembled a crazed horse stuck in a burning barn and the sweat ran in rivulets down his body. He was listening intently to every word that dropped from her lips. “Back on your knees pansy-ass.” Fred struggled, wheezing to an upright, if somewhat bowed position.
Beth again bent to stare into his bloodshot orbs. “Show me your teeth.”
“Whaaaat?”
“Show me your choppers or I’ll knock them out of your head to get a better look.” He pulled his lips back and bared his teeth. “Nice. You ever have braces? No, you were just born with straight teeth. Ginny had braces though, didn’t she. Wore them for years, cost her parents a small fortune. You didn’t know her then, before you two met. Shouldn’t stop you from appreciating the effort, right? Wrong. She’s wearing a removable plate now, isn’t she fat boy. You knocked her front teeth out a couple of years ago. Remember that? Good thing you made up a story to get the insurance to cover the cost.”
In a flat menacing tone, “How badly do you want to keep your teeth, asshole?”
“Please, please please,” Fred whispered.
“Oh Fred, we haven’t yet gotten to your finest hour.” Beth resumed pacing. “Do you remember last Halloween? You drank a 12-pack while Beth handed out candy. When the neighborhood still hadn’t settled down when you were ready for bed, you took it out on Ginny. She thought you were going to kill her that time. She tried to call 911. Remember that? What did you do? Well you just couldn’t have your wife reporting you to the Po-leece, now could you? After all the effort you’ve taken to keep your dirty little secret? So you broke her hand, smashed it with the phone she was trying to use to save her life. How many bones did you break that time? Don’t remember? Seventeen. Do you know how many bones you have in your body? 206.” Beth glanced at the clock, “Ginny won’t be home for another hour, how many bones do you think we could break in that time?”
“Please, please, please, don’t kill me…” Fred whispered.
“Shut up. Listen very carefully if you want to live through this night. You have, in the past, been known to be physically abusive to women, your wife in particular. This unacceptable behavior appears more frequently when you drink, which you do a lot. Are you with me?” This last was accompanied by a vicious back hand to his right cheek. She couldn’t allow him to become complacent about the situation, and a constant battery of abuse would keep him off-balance and dreading the next blow. Fred’s lip was split and the blood trickled down his chin. He sobbed openly now.
“What you’re going to do is give up drinking. Pry your fingers off your long-neck bottle, cause your beer drinking days are over. There’s an AA meeting at the high school on Thursday nights, 7pm. You be there, fat boy, or I might have to pay you another visit, and next time I won’t be so congenial. Nod if you understand me.” Fred nodded furiously. Beth squatted in front of him and looked him in the eye. She reached down between his legs and grabbed his balls with her left hand and squeezed. She retrieved her knife with her right.
Fred’s eyes were glued to her knife. She rotated it in the light, watching the beams dance on the blade, knowing he was mesmerized with the horror of losing his dick. He began shuddering uncontrollably. Beth stroked the knife along the shaft of his penis. She drew a line in the flesh with the tip of the knife and the blade parted the skin like butter. A crimson line snaked past the tip of the penis and dripped slowly to the carpet. Beth had his balls firmly in her grasp but he still spasmed at the shock of the blade against his genitals. Beth squeezed harder, “ah ah ah, hold still or the blade might slip.” Fred froze.
“Now Fred, I understand that it’s not easy to change your life, and next to impossible without the proper incentive. So I’m going to give you a little help. If you ever lay a hand on Ginny again, I’ll know. And I’ll come back. You won’t know when, but someday you’ll hear something go bump in the night, and you’ll know it’s me. And I’m not going to waste my time roughing you up or cracking a few ribs. Our next encounter will be short and sweet. Know why?”
Fred stared bug-eyed, with a deer-in-the-headlights intensity. “Next time we’re not going to have this friendly little chat. If I have to come back to this dirty little hole, it will be for one thing and one thing only. I’ll cut it off.” Beth brought the blade up and twisted it an inch from Fred’s face, his blood wet on the blade. Fred had to cross his eyes to maintain focus on the knife, yet he dared not look away. “I’ll cut it off and I’ll stick it in the blender and then I’ll feed it to your pooch. There will be no reattachment Freddie boy. Are we clear?” Fred nodded vigorously, as if afraid that if he didn’t show his whole-hearted support, she’d do it right now.
Beth released her death grip on his genitals. She rose from her squat to stand and look down at him. She cleaned her knife on the scraps of his clothing and it in its sheath. She reached out and raised Fred’s chin up with her forefinger and icily whispered, “I hope you do understand Fred. I hope you change your life and become a respectable member of society. Women were not placed on this earth to be victims. If you raise your hand to a woman again, I’ll know,” Beth paused, “and I’ll be back.” She dropped her hand away from his face.
Fred managed to utter a single sentance, “Who are you?” he croaked.
“Who am I?” Beth bent to retrieve her black pullover. “I’m your angel. Your own personal angel of retribution bringing you a message about the wrath of God.”